a race between me
and the Expedition--which shall come off first--and sometimes I am
afraid I am going to be the loser!

Martin ought to sail on the sixteenth--only seventeen days! I am
expected to be married on the tenth--only eleven! Oh, Mary O'Neill, what
a strange contradictory war you are waging! Look straight before you,
dear, and don't be afraid.

I had a letter from the Reverend Mother this evening. She is crossing
from Ireland to-morrow, which is earlier than she intended, so I suppose
Father Dan must have sent for her.

I do hope Martin and she will get on comfortably together. A struggle
between my religion and my love would he more than I could bear now.

* * * * *

JULY 31. When I awoke this morning very late (I had slept after
daybreak) I was thinking of the Reverend Mother, but lo! who should
come into the room but the doctor from Blackwater!

He was very nice; said I had promised to let him see me again, so he had
taken me at my word.

I watched him closely while he examined me, and I could see that he was
utterly astonished--couldn't understand how I came to be alive--and said
he would never again deny the truth of the old saying about dying of a
broken heart, because I was clearly living by virtue of a whole one.

I made pretence of wanting something in order to get nurse out of the
room, and then reached lip to the strange doctor and whispered "_When?_"

He wasn't for telling me, talked about the miraculous power of God which
no science could reckon with, but at last I got a word out of him which
made me happy, or at least content.

Perhaps it's sad, but many things look brighter that are far more
sorrowful--dying of a broken heart, for example, and (whatever else is
amiss with me) mine is not broken, but healed, gloriously healed, after
its bruises, so thank God for that, anyway!

* * * * *

Just had some heavenly sleep and such a sweet dream! I thought my
darling mother came to me. "You're cold, my child," she said, and then
covered me up in the bedclothes. I talked about leaving my baby, and she
said she had had to do the same--leaving me. "That's what we mothers
come to--so many of us--but heaven is over all," she whispered.

* * * * *

AUGUST 1. I really cannot understand myself, so it isn't a matter for
much surprise if nobody else understands me. In spite of what the
strange doctor said